Review of The Eyelid by S.D. Chrostowska
Coach House, 2020
What is the cost of dreams in the twenty-first century? There was already heightened awareness of the deterioration of personal time and space — the work-life balance — before the pandemic began, which further highlighted the increased difficulty of escaping from reality, whether physically or mentally, resulting in a heightened interest in community and forms of care. A similar concern is at the heart of S.D. Chrostowska’s novel The Eyelid, in which the reader follows an unnamed male protagonist through the realm and politics of dreams with Chevauchet, a diplomat from the dream state of Onirica, “the place where the creative imagination had the fewest restrictions.” The reader follows the protagonist on his quest to help Chevauchet achieve his two-fold goal — “To have our special statehood recognized at the highest level and as soon as possible […]and in the longer term, to work with all nations, all peoples, toward the final dissolution of the state form.” — a journey that, through its use of allegory and echoes of past literary traditions and art movements, probes the reader to take a step back and re-examine the current systems that shape our lives.
The reader’s introduction to the protagonist and his circumstances is brief and straightforward. He is painted using a fine brush to delineate his most rudimentary boundaries as Chrostowska emphasizes his psychological portrait as a thinker and a dreamer. The reader is dropped into the text according to the “dream rules” outlined by Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Inception: suddenly, in the middle of the action, the narrative unfolding and unravelling itself around the reader in an ever-flowing state that, even upon “waking” (finishing the book), never quite feels like it has truly ended. Traversing quasi-urban spaces that recall Louis Aragon’s The Paris Peasant’s surreal vision and periodically slipping into dreamscapes laden with metaphor, The Eyelid is as much a discovery for the reader as it is for the protagonist, whose thoughts and experiences become the bridge between text and reality.
Chrostowska’s novel is closer to a literary manifesto in narrative form than it is a linear text with the aim of telling a specific story. Therefore, it is best to approach The Eyelid as this sort of literary manifesto, for it is only in doing so that the beautiful complexity of the text is acknowledged and given the attention that it deserves. It is not that there is no story to tell in The Eyelid. It can be summarized quite succinctly: the protagonist meets Chevauchet and learns about Onirica and Chevauchet’s mission to prevent fantacide, “The death of imagination in ordinary women and men,” after which they traverse the dream world until the protagonist faces the choice of continuing Chevauchet’s mission for him or allowing dreams to fall under the controlling hand of government. Rather, it is a story that is cannot be easily written because it is currently unfolding around us, in a world that increasingly embodies Chevauchet’s observation that “sleep equated with sloth, with good-for-nothingness” because, “For the moment, the economy has not found a way to capture it. Sleep is excessive when it exceeds the boundaries of the system, as it invariably does when we dream.”
The Eyelid is constantly aware of its own place within the traditions it draws from and does not shy away from orienting and re-orienting itself as the text progresses. Chrostowska has a balanced hold over the writing and imagery in the novel, firm enough to honour the spirit of Surrealism but still loose enough to allow room for breathing, for a sense of natural flow. At other moments, the text is more overt in its commentary on literary and artistic lineage, directly naming Romanticism and Surrealism and the Baudelarian swan, to acknowledge the relationship between the protagonist and Chevauchet recalls Dante and Virgil.
At the same time, Chrostowska creates her own complex “dream science,” from distinguishing between day- and nightdreams while emphasizing their connectivity (“losing sleep will, over time, cost you not just your dreams but also your daydreams, and ultimately even thinking creatively”), to the ethics of “dream hopping,” which Chevauchet defines thusly: “All should enjoy right of passage through the dreams and daydreams of others, on the condition that they abstained from meddling in them. […] And since dreams neither really belonged nor were original to us, a dream-community ought to be possible.” There is also a highly technological, even sci-fi, dimension to parts of The Eyelid, like the Comprehensive Illusion (CI) system, that sets it apart from its literary ancestors, thereby demonstrating that surrealistic texts and science fiction do not have to be two separate branches of the literary tree, that cross-pollination is not only possible but also yields startling results.
In tapping into the forgotten figure of the philosopher artist/poet, the air of sophistication and class that surrounds him, and drawing from it on the level of style and content, there are also moments where Chrostowska also borrows some of the outdated ways of thinking and language that was also characteristic of earlier periods. Chapter 28 continues the romanticization of mental health that was most palpable in the Outsider/Art Brut movement of the mid-twentieth century, while chapter 30 reiterates the idea of human uniqueness when the protagonist tells readers that “Animals — be they dogs, swans, or horses — were incapable of complex reverie and, in any case, should not have to do the work of men. They could not take over our responsibility.” The sleeping gallery is imbued with a touch of orientalism in chapter 36, invoking Victorian literature, while the insult “filthy Jewrab” in chapter 40 leaves a bitter taste despite the context in which it is used. Whether these little details are included purposefully to add a touch of “authenticity” to the text is unclear. Yet, it is difficult not to find them uncomfortably out of place or wonder what their intentionality was, especially if one has some familiarity with the traditions and reasonings behind these examples.
Although The Eyelid offers many avenues for contemplation as well as parallels to our own circumstances long-term, it does not offer any concrete answers. Even the closing lines of the book are laden with mystery, which I read as a melancholy smile of defeat: “The world is an eyeball in space, which nothing protects. Upon lidless eyes flies soon come to rest. But the corpse in whose orbits they will lay their eggs has seen happiness.” Whether The Eyelid is saddening or comforting in its familiarity depends on the viewer. However, it is undoubtedly a book that will feel like a knowledgeable and thrilling companion with a dash of eccentricity, a much-needed combination in these trying times.
